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1

D--We're doing an interview with Bernice Freiburg in her home in Baltimore,

Maryland. The date is Jan. 31, 1988 and the interviewer is David Dodrill.

Bernice, tell me a little bit about you background even before you went

to work for the Rosens. Like where you were born, and a little bit about

your educational background.

B--I was born in Baltimore and I became a secretary after high school and

worked two or three jobs, not too many because I always got very in-

volved where I was. And the job that I had prior to the Rosens was

a ccmmnmity organization where Leonard and Jack were very active. They

along with 25 other board members at this organization always said, "If

you ever decide to leave here, please come to work for me." And as time

changed, Leonard was the only one who really wanted me. So I went to

work for him in the early 50's. That was prior to Gulf AMerican. But

I had known the Rosens from childhood. WE were neighbors. And Leonard

and Jack were older than I was, so we were never kids together. My

sister was actually closer in age. Then there was another daughter.

There were two boys and two girls. Do you know this?

D-I know some of this, but I'd like to hear it again.

B-One daughter was the oldest who died at a young age. The youngest was

about a year or so older than me.

D--What were names?

B--The oldest was Edith and the youngest was Sylvia. Sylvia was married to

Saul Sandler. He was in the organization for number of years. Our mot-

hers were young, raised a family and running little businesses. And

Leonard and Jack were real bad kids. You know, they were into every-

thing. There is a picture of Leonard and Jack sitting together and

Leonard's right leg was broken and Jack's left leg was broken. You

know, it was kid stuff. So we kind of grew up knowing each other. Our

mothers were girlfriends and remained girlfriends until Fannie Rosen

-4 2

died. She died a number of years before my mother.

D--What kind of businesses were they?

B-They were little grocery stores. And they were tough businesses. You

had to be up at 6:00 in the morning and get the milk in from outside.

And we sold coal and wood and kerosene. And in those days, all the

children worked in the business. When you were four years old they

would put you up on a box and you would weigh little bags of sugar

on the scale. And we all worked hard.

D-Did Leonard and Jack work in those family businesssed too?

B-They must have, but Leonard was older. Leonard may have already been

on the raod. He was always pitching something. He pitched at state

fairs. He pitched everything including Lanolin and that was the begin-

ning of the Charles Antel business. And on of his very close friends

who became some kind of partner in Antel was a man named Charlie kash-

er who was a national figure. Did you hear that name?

D-Yes. How do you spell his name?

B-Kasher. Jack was really very, he was brilliant, Leonard was the one

with all the excitement and the runner and the doer, and the promoter.

And Jack was really a deep thinker. Both of them were self-taught.

Jack might have gone through some books sometimes. Jack's friends, he

attracted I gues what you would call an intelligent circle. One of his

friends was Colonel GRay who was a Colonel in German Warfare. One of

his very dear frineds was the second man in the ARD program to India and

to Pakistan, that aid program. So he had, in addition to the old friends

and the normal kinds of friends that they would be attracted to, he

Really associated with people that --. They would never make small

talk.; Jack was very terrible with small talk, terrible. It was all

business or all deep or all issues or all philanthropy or all something.

You could never have small talk.

D-Did both Leonard and Jack graduate from high school, or go to college?

C087 3

B-Jack was constantly taking courses and probably Leonard did too. I don't

S know. Leonard was much older and off and married. Don't put this in,

but I used to date Jack. And he would wear me out and he would never ask

about anything. He would be talking about, one of the things he said was,

"How would you like it if you had a little car and you could go to any

of the stores in America And charge things the way you do in a depart-

ment store. And of course, that idea became the diners club, which he

never got into. He was a very conceptual person.

D-A lot of new ideas.

B-Did they go to college? No.

D-Did they have any little businesses when they were growing up? Did

they get involved in anything before Charles ANtel.

B-The earliest that I know was theri installment business. They had a

big store in Baltimore and I guess a warehouse. And in it.....Oh, and

Dorothy, who was Leonard's wife, she would go inside one of these things.

Leonard would be out on the road teaching people how to sell. They had

salesmen going into the Carolinas. They had the installments. They'd

carry a hurricane for a dollar and he'd knock on a door and say, "how'd

you like hurricane lamp for a dollar?" Today it's like siding men. Af-

ter he sold them that lamp for a dollar, he sold them furniture or a

refrigerator or whatever. They had a lot of black men who worked for

them. That whole crew, of course I never worked there, but that whole

crew for someway at one time worked for Antel. We had a guy named Les

Deckman who would tell us these stories. He'd say, honey I got a dress

for you $5.95."

D--What kind of things would this business sell?

B-Appliances, furniture. A black man named Winston could pick up a

refrigerator with two arms and sling it over his shoulder. He came to

Antel, he moved all the furniture. We were always moving. It kept

getting bigger, bigger, We needed more space, more space. There was

4

a man who was associated with them from the pitching on the road days

named Charlie Finkerstein. Did you hear about him?

D-I've heard that name, but I don't remember

B-Charlies was what you would call a -- character today., And I remem-

ber one of the stories, Leonard or Jack or somebody was selling coat

hangers. And Leonard would pitch the coat hangers and Charlies would

say, "Can I have two?" And Leonard would say, "I'm sorry. Only one to

a customer." Charlies would say, "But I really need two., One for my

brother-in-law." And Leonard would say, "You better get out of here,

I'm going to call the police. Only one to a customer." And they created

the pitch excitement. And all these people would say, give me two, give

me three, Charlie Finkersteing worked for Leonard and Jack all the years

that I was there. And all these people, the names I mentioned would kill

for them. I mean, such loyalty,

D-Why do you think that was?

B-Because they were always running to do the next thing. If they found that

could carry the ball on something, they would let you do it, go hang your-

self. Do it well, do it bad, but do it, and they're on to the next thing.

D--So, they gave people a lot of latitude to carry out different things?

B--Which was how I got to the point that I did in the company. I was Leo-

nard's secretary. And I guess I'd been working with him a year or two.

Oh, I hated it. The first week I was their, I gave them notice. And I

said, I don't think that I'm going to like this job, but I'll stay 2

weeks, until you find somebody. And he said, "Don't do me any favors.

You can leave now." And I was so hurt that I started crying. He said,

"Look, I'll tell you what, we're old friends. You stay here a month and

if at the end of a month you don't like it you can go. But don't leave

because the way things are happening." So I stayed and by the end of the

month he was always getting involved in something where he would miss a

5

train. Here;s the list, and interview these ten people for me. And I'11

be there later." Sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn't., He would

dictate piles and piles of mail, In addition to things he would say tell

them yes, tell them no,, tell them .I'11 send, tell them maybe., And there

was no way to So -To-endeared a gTrl from the other office, and
~i-' CC'Y' / j-,t|9/"1.-Z.'Z '
I would pile everything on her., And I had her stashed away., Whenever

we'd catch up with Leonard he would say to me, "You're fantastic, how do

you get all this done?" And I would say, "Nothing to it." When we got

to the point where he was always giving me a raise., I never asked for

a raise anywhere I worked, never asked for one there., And I was up to

$100 a week, which was big money for a secretary. So, at one point, he

said, "Listne, you dod very good at what you do and you could be a sec-

retary for the rest of you life and over the years make another $100, but

look around, there is so much going on. Find yourself a niche someway.

Because you could be good in this company. Do you know what you want to

do?" I said, "I want to do what you do." He was buying the time and

the networks and all that. It that's kind of how it evolved.

D-Well, tell me a little bit more about Charles Antel.

B-Charles Antel started mail order. It was Lanolin. You bought the

shampoo and you got the lanolin. And if it didn't do all the things

it told you it would do, send it back and keep the jar or whatever. And

it cost you absolutely nothing, so what do you have to lose? Nothing but

your hair perm. O.K. This was a 30 minute T.V, pitch.

D-What time of the day would it come on?

B-You know this. It was after the sign off. After the star-spangled

banner. This was the early days of T.V. There was nothing on but

Howdy Doody, puppets and at 12:00 after the news and the flag and the

prayer, that's when we would go in and buy this cheap time., And it was

a 30 minute pitch that would start off like .a mystery story, The young

fellow that ws the narrator was Ricky -Loue-led. And he would say, "Pull

6

up a chair because I'm going to tell you a hair raising tale.," And then

for 30 minutes, everybody would settle down because they thought it was

going to be a story. And then he'd say did you ever see a bald headed

sheep and that would never happen because lanolin makes the hair grow on

sheep and it was all curly hair,. That went on for a half hour or maybe

15 or 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes was telling you how to buy it.

Send the money to this address:; And the orders jsut kept coming in.

Lots of money, -i ^

D-When was this? When did this start?

B-I don't remember the years., So they named the stuff Formula 9.,, That

was the name of the stuff tht made your hair grow. Something about

olives, but I forget that., They started with the Formula 9 which was the

hair creme. By the time the hair spray rolled in, it was retail., You

could buy it in the stores. It was forced by demand into stores, What

happened was, people saw it on T.V. and they would run to the drugstore

and want to buy it and the drugstores couldn't get it because it was

only mail order. Until finally, they set up the wholesale and distribu-

tion system with the warehouse in California and Indiana, They would,

a few years later, there was another Antel product. It was liquid make-

up. And that was a 30 minute pitch five times a week at 10:30 in the

morning, before soap operas got on. Did anybody tell you about taht?

D-NO.

B-Well, somehow, you see ideas used to come in., People making offers to the

Rosens all the time. Someone had Ern had made up the parts to the

story on selling this liquid makeup. But the pitch on this was, "You

would get eyebrow forms that you would draw like a stencil." What else

was in that song? O.K., now this mail order program was, you bought the

makeup and you got all these little forms for free., The forms you

couldn't buy anywhere., Ern Westmore was the cameraman and all these

forms were pattened by him. In this 30 minute pitch he had a lady

2 i 7

sitting in the damn chair for 30 minutes, Can you imagine getting rid

of that crap today? He had the lady sit there, He'd be making her up

for 15 or 20 minutes and then would show the before and the after.,

Charlie Hepner, may or may not have been with us at that point, I think

that's where Hepner got involved., Hepner was a film producer, He

didn't tell you?

D-I guess he did, I must have misunderstood him,

B-During my big training period where I was going to become this big media

person and didn't know anything, we were connected with a New York ad

agency and Les Persky, who now is a film producer,. He makes big movies.,

You see his name on T.V, That's where I went to train, in Les Persky's

office,

D-Now, when they would do this half hour pitch, were they live or were

they recorded and used again and again.

B-Filmed. Everything was filmed. And you'd put everything into making this

one film., It would take forever to do it. Leonard and Jack always needed

it tomorrow. I never got involved with the production end. I'm not

sure Hepner was there. And I'd be on the phone trying to buy all the

half hours I could on T.V., and the people that I would be buying from

at the stations, usually a general manager because a salesman had no

authority to sell you a half-hour for a pitch. And they'd say, "well

how many of these do you have? And I would say 5, but we only have one

ready. When will you have the other four? Very soon., And we were on

all the big stations.

D-So, were general managers pretty much eager to get stuff like this or did

they not want it.

B-They loved the money, And, well people thought it was hard to buy the

time, but I thought it was easy because it-was money to test., If you

were on a half hour at 12 at night or 1:30 in the morning and you paid

$500 for a half hour of tv. time and you filled about 500 orders, how

8

smart did you have to be to buy more time?

D-I guess that's true.,

B-Then that went over the counter, Again, people ran to the drugstore

and grocery stores to buy it and it wasn't there., And they'd call,

and finally that was sent into distribution. But by then, it was a

little classier business,

D-Let me ask you a question about the Charles Antel products, Were the

products themselves significantly different or unique or was it just

the way it was marketed., In other words, could people have gotten lan-

olin shampoo elsewhere?

B-Well, lanolin is an age old product. It had never been promoted, I

think the use of lanolin was so great it probably changed the whole

world market in that product., You maybe you used this much lanolin

in the world market beofre Charles Antel and the manufacturers drove

the market up that much. Was itunique? I would say that when you

are selling this kind of stuff and you've got to go through FDA, it's

got to be good., Compared to everything else, it may be better. We

had a lack in Baltimore with the factory where they were making some

of this stuff., And overall we could prove it. But up until Gulf

American who was always doing something by mail. After Antel there

was a diet thing. The same principle that's used in all diet pills

today. It's some kind of --. You take the pill and it's some

kind of sponge. When you put it in water, it expands so you have a

lot of your stomach filled. That was pretty successful. There was

one that made you sad. That wasn't too successful. A lot of these

things, we didn't even have the product. It was an idea and a pitch.

It wasn't just television. In fact, radio was first. Radio was first.

D-Would they use newspaper ads and stuff?

B-Not until it was retail. There was another retail product in the

Charles Antel days. It was a child's bike-and that was really

revolutionary Those were real respectable, legitimate. One minute spots
like everybody else. And the little girl who did the commercial was

Patty Duke. The girl who was playing in the blind story. Now, I know

Hepner was involved then. Because he was the director of the commercial.

D-They tried marketing for various things when somebody came up with an

idea.

B--When somebody came up with an idea, Leonard or jack, that's where all the

ideas started. Now they may have been out picking other people's brains

or other people giving them ideas, like we're sitting around.

D--How big did Charles Antel become through their different mail order oper-

ations?

B--Charles Antel was the top ten product in drugs and cosmetics. It was

sold in every major chain in Florida, Walgreen's and Eckerds. And in

the department stores like Jordan Marsh. Sold in every major chain. I

know that Leonard and a man named WentworthVwho was about 6'7", they

would go out on the road initially to get the product into the stores.

Do you know how that business works? You've got to get money for adver-

tising, you've got to give them this, you've got to give them that. A

cash register display or wahtever, there are all kinds of deals. And

Leonard went in on it with Wentworth.

D--Do you have any idea of the dollar amount?

B--I don't remember.

D--Do you have any idea of how many employees they had?

B-Don't remember. I really don't. There were jobbers in a lot of cities.

D--Was it a public sales corporation or did Jack and Leonard own in themselves?

B--Jack and Leonard. What happened was they went into a television ad cam-

paign which was another fantastic idea. The numbers today are sort of

meaningless when you think today that a 20 second spot on the Superbowl

is 650,000 dollars, it's unbelievable. We could buy a network spot for

like 30 thousands. We would go on the Today show, you could buy five days

10

a week for 35,000. But what we did to get all this time, we went to a

time-trading operation. O.K. Let me see. Suppose I go to a television

station and I want to buy their first class time at ten spots a week.

That's going to cost me a thousand dollars. Well, it's all published

on a rate card. And I want to buy 10 spots for a thousand dollars a

week. And that's under prime time. If I want to go to a not so good

time maybe those ten spots are 75 dollars a piece. If a want to go on

a really-strange time, maybe 50 dollars a spot. So, what we did was, we

went out and bought films from film companies, half-hours that today

would compare to Cheers, Family Ties, that kind of thing. We would buy

them, not outright, but buy them for a run, 39 films. We would go out

and buy those from film distributors. At their rate and sell them to

a T.V. station, not sell it. We would give it to them if they would

give us time. By circumventing with the films we could get say 500

dollars, we could get 1500 dollars worth of time for 500 dollars that

we paid for the films. I give you the film, you run it whenever you

want, you just give me back ten spots or whatever our contract is. But

don't give me the fringe time. Just give me whatever's open. So we

took some bad ones with the good ones. Jogging all over the country,

doing that, plopping these films. And this film library that we had

access, to, some bad, some good.

D--How many stations would you be on?

B-Oh, maybe at least two in the top markets which would have made it 50

or 75 stations in the off markets. I guess we were on over 200 stations.

And when we sold Charles Antel we sold them a lot of the time that we

had.

D-Do you know how much Chales Antel sold for?

B-I don't remember. It was a big number to me then. It's all realtive.

D-Did the Rosens still own Charles Antel when they had started Gulf?

B-Yes.

D-Tell me a little bit aoubt the start of Gulf American and how that hap-

pened from waht you saw.

B-Leonard, I was in the agency for a long time. Leonard Rosen went to

Florida. The rumor is that he went because he had arthritis. Whether

he did or not, I don't know. And he mentioned to Jack that people were

donw there subdividing tracks. And they take d about it for a long

time. Then he said to me, "Do me a favor, there's somebody selling some-

thing in Indian River. Go see what they are doing." So I went into the

Indian River office and I went in there pretending to be a customer and

7 they were doing absolutely nothing. They gave me a purple piece

of paper with prices and maybe a little four page handout of somesort.

What really happened was he ran into a man named Milt Mendelson. And

they started.

D-So Leonard was the one that got in on it.

B--Leonard was always the one running around, but he never did anything with-

out Jack, never. Jack never did anything without him. And over the years,

people would always say to me, "Which one is really smarter?" And I

would always say that one has one thing and the other has the other and

together they are an unbeatable combination. And after Jack died it

seemed to me that Leonard was like half a person.

D-Did he seem to have trouble doing business things?

B--No. He was doing them all but, I guess he needed certain playback and it

was all different.

D-Well, did your job change when Gulf came along? Or when did you become

involved in that?

B--I was always involved in th advertising for Gulf. I think after Antel

was running at the time and we would both be setting up time schedules,

part for Gulf part for Antel. For Gulf we had 15 minute little things.

Then when we were buying network. We started the Today Show when they

12

started with that little monkey. Faye. Dunaway.,

D-I'm too young to remember all that.

B-Well, Dunaway was the first M.C. on the morning show. And he had a

monkey on there. Have you ever seen a monkey doing the weather and

everything? And we did live one minute spots. Over the years, we

used the smae spot. And something like because of the tremendous inter-

est in the state of Florida and the West Coast in particular Gulf Ameri-

can pulled Florida Digest and facts and figures and all that., And you

sent into the network for your free book. And-

D-Was that pretty successful?

B-For Gulf we used 20 or 30 different ways to advertise and the purpose, of

course was toget the name out, but primarily to get people calling in.

You've got to really sit there and take to somebody and tell them

two or three times. So, you use t.v. and newspaper and magazines. Went

to all the state fairs and county fairs and all the trade show. The

garden show, we were in every world's fair in a five year period or may-

be a ten year period.

D-Now, I remember seeing that.

B-There was a Seattle fair, a Montreal fair. And I went to every one of

them. I was in Montreal, in Seattle, and New York was the -- when we

had five or six different exhibits in five or six different buildings.

Also, the sales department had set up salesmen in the hotels and motels.

They put people in their cars and they ran them over to hospitality areas,

like a party. And with all these exhibits which were manned by shifts,

they were on 18 hours a day at these fairs. There would be couple men

and pretty girl and you signed you name for this free book. And they

would give away a trip to Florida. And an airline.

D-So when the people went to those hospitality rooms were they actually

selling property there or were they jsut-they were actually doing the

selling there.

13

B-Then when we decided to chase more of them into Flordia, well we're get-

ting a little ahead. We were getting all these leads, millions of leads

a year. You'd go out with the sales officers. You'd have big sales meet-

ings all the time., I'd get up there and talk about the advertising, and

everybody got leads. Somebody in an office would get on the phone and

call these people and try to set up appointments. Before they did that

Jack said, "You call a guy from Florida, a super salesman named Bernie

Musket. You all go to Philadelphia and don't try anything in Baltimore.

You go to Philadelphia, you make those appointments and go to people's

houses." so we tried that. We'd all break off and go to these appoint-

ments. By the time you would unfold the flat in somebody's house and

they would want to t1k it over, you'd make it then. He would talk to

his brother-in-law and he would asay "Are you crazy?" Buying something

before you see it? Anyway, they set up a big film team, salesmen all

over the place. And started running this film in the homes for couples.

So they did that and then somebody said, "let's have a party." "It's just

as easy to talk to a lot-of people as it is to talk to two people." So

the first party we tried to do that way, five buyers, five new people,

five people that already owned. And the guys came from Florida. They

did that for a while. Finally they said, "Let's have a big party."

That was when Connie Mack came up. We did that in Washington and we

invited all these leads. It was set up there. And Connie made the

pitch. I didn't lend my name to this if I didn't think that it was

good. Well anyway, after the pitch.... We had that big plot on the

wall. After the pitch, the people were so enthralled to meet Connie

Mack, such a celebrity, nobody bought anything. They were up there shak-

ing his hand. Then we said, we need to have' a little party. And the

In the beginning it was a crude system but we tried to, I mean crude

technically. Where we would get a location to hold the party which

was usually in a little restaurant and try to key the people that we

would invite into a certain radius that the party was held. That was

Ti 14

crude we had a demand from the post office on a part-time basis. It was
00 5
done by zip codes. And it was after tht the big mailers set up their

mailing lists that way on big computers. So that we could actually key

people in so that they wouldn't have to dirve more than five or ten miles
V A\ A^ 2
to aprty., And that was the party plan de resistance. It was scientific,

it was marvelous, it was a film a speaker.

D-How many people would be at a party like that?

B-Well, they experimented with a lot of different numbers., It finally came

down to a science like 20 people or whatever it was. My part in all of

this that I've told you was very normal because I was not changed that

much. I was not involved in the selling as much as I was in the testing

of the number of these programs. And all these names were done in our

agency. Whcih meant that you had to be designing the invitations. So

it would constantly be something new to the people who were getting it.

At one point we had celebrity parties. In Baltimore it would be a Colt

player, pardon me, the Colts are dead. It would be a Ynkee or a Giant in

New York, or.... It was geared to the town so that in some cases people

would come because they would like to meet a celebrity who would get up

and say a few words and leave. That was the end of him.. All of these

parties were done out of Baltimore. All the leads, all the names, all

the mailing. At one point we used to set up the locations and every-

thing but with the sales set up around the country through brokers,

they would start handling it on theri own. There wer some good brokers

in Chicage, Ohio, a lot of places had some real good brokers.

D-Well, what time period are we talking about? Is this still late 50's?

B-The first shuffle, as they used to say, was thrown in '57. At which

point I started running to Florida. Well, because no one there was

really trianed fro anything, everybody ran to do something.

D-So when you went to Flordia woudl you got o Miami or would you go to

~J 15

Miami or would you go to Cape Coral.

B-Well, it depended. If I was doing something.., .,.There was a Florida where

we had P.R. people Interesting the twist to take a trip to see the property,.

And the way we would enlist these people was trh6ugh a P.R. program. We'd

go around to where tourist would be and get into a conversation., And

in the beginning I'd go up and sign up some hotels who didn't want us.

Try to get into the back with the cabanas and chairs were and there you

could do a little business because the cabana managers were always

looking for a little handout. And so I went with the Florida shark-es.

He was the one who took the payoff part. And I would be the one that

would talk the legitimate part. Nobody was under any obligation to buy

anything and that was the truth. You would get a dirty look if you

didn't buy but you always got you chicken dinner. So I was busy in the

beginning of that program. I seemed to be busy in all the beginnings.

As we got involved in a lot of the P.R., bringing the editors down, we

would do that. We used to do all this stuff from Baltimore. Get on

the phone and call the editors and say, "Come on down and go fishing."

D-So all the promotion and everything came out of Baltimore?

B-W-ell, it all started in Baltimore.

D-Where was the headquarters here?

B--We were on Charles adn 25th street. But I guess it started in one

thing and ended up in eight things, four this way and four this way.

So it all started there. The P.R., I think one of the reasons why a lot

of this stuff stayed in Baltimore, plus the fact that Jack ddin't want

to move to Florida at the time, was because there were no phone sys-

tmes in Cape Coral., If you wanted to make a long distance call you would

have to wait maybe 30 minutes. We had WATTS lines. We just called any-

body anywhere. So we would send out at least an editor a week. I said

to Ray Mar, at first I'd got to Jack and say,"we get an house in McCall'5

magazine if you'll build it." So Bob Finkernagel would come up and we'd

go to McCalls and he would sit and in five minutes he'd be up on the

16

guy's desk, And we would take about how much the thing would cost and

how you would do it and the McCall house inparticular, A bunch of ladies

designed it,.,

D-So, what was the deal with that?

B-We built it., They had a big seminar. We built that thing in like one

yaer. First thing at a seminar, what do women do? What do women want

in a house? The whole theory was men design houses but women have to

live in them. So we had all tese women come,, Women decorators, mothers,

and they designed what would be the perfect house., With the perfect

kithcne and all that kind of ting.

D-So the desing of this house and everything was featured in articles in

McCall' s?

B-Well, that was the whole deal., We got about six pages and like a million

reprints and we printed like 6 million more reprints, I gues we were

spending at least 10 million a year. I guess my prime function was

about how much money we spent and where we spent it. And how. Jack

in the last several years of Gulf was the man that I mostly went to. I

would say to Jack, he would say, "took, I'm going to give you 2 million,

but I would have to design a one year plan with 2 million dollars. And

I would present it to him and he would be too busy and he would say to

do it for a few weeks and see how it goes. He never looked at this little

thing and that little thing. Just do it. A lot of the bad things you

didn't take about too much because you did too many good things. But

D-But you think that at the peak they were doing about 10 million dollars

a year in advertising?

B-I told you in 19G8 they sold downstate until all the turnover was made.

So we're now taking about nearly 70. So it was 18 years ago. O.K. So

in Baltimore we had the editor's program. I had a young guy with me

named Mike Reichgut, who was the most amazing kid you ever met. Couldn'

get started but when he did he was good. So I'd start the editor's program.

17
I made a couple of phone calls and they didn't want to come. You don't

have to write about us, write about the station, just use the dateline.,

A lot of them would come back year after year., So I would like to work

out the presentatation as to when we'd get them to come and design a

whole package to maidl to them, whether a fishing editor or a sports

eidtor or a housing editor, or a youth editor when we set up the teen club.

You know how newspapers all with all these different editors. And what-

ever was going on we would find that editor to come down., When we sud-

denly realized there were about ten churches there and 10,000 people we

started bringing in the religious editors. I would really start up all

these things and then Mike owuld set them up. At one point Mike had let-

ters going out and editors calling him asking him when they could come.

He got the easy part,

D-So this would provide free publicity.

B--One year we had five magazines featuring our houses with another theme.

/>"/' At one point, I was very busy doing -. We were running back and

fort to New York. We would make the rounds and go everywhere. Then

we had a lot of people coming down to make commercials, Bob told you

abut that. Some would come in to us. But Bob and I had a marvelous

time together. If ever a female had a unique job in this country, it

was me.

D-Were you all the time the only female in a high position like that, the

people you were working with and al that?

B-Only, other women.

D-IIow do you attribute to the fact that you were there?

B--I never let anybody say no. I really learned, I guess you have to have

something allittle innate that will do it., I'm sometimes compulsive.

Once I want to do something I won't stop. That may have been part of

it. I was just so lucky to be in the right place at the right time with
-\tho people who let do it., I became the executive vice-president of the
tho people who let me do it. I became the executive vice-president of the

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agency because not only was I was compulsive about myself, but I became

what you would call kind of a motivator, and there is nothing harder to

motivate than a bunch of creative people. You know, not film, that was

in New York, but all the brochures, you can't motivate creative people

because they can't get an idea when the office says that they need to.

They get it over a drink or laying in bed at 12:00. And they really

were difficult, But BoB and I got along great. Oh, we had some hot

chats, but he was going to be the one person who could get it all done,